


Sober. Kids. All good.

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: 1980s, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 07:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7214035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Curt says, "Wash this," as he dumps something on Arthur's wet chest. "There's shit on it."</p><p>"What the bloody hell—"</p><p>The beer bottle drops from his fingers, tips onto its side, and slowly sinks into the bathwater as it fills.</p><p>The baby on his chest wriggles, yawns with his tiny toothless mouth, and grabs Arthur's thumb.</p><p>"Curt?" Arthur calls, even though he's vanished back down the hall. "Several questions."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sober. Kids. All good.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carolinecrane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinecrane/gifts).



> Inspired by [Ewan's tweet](https://twitter.com/mcgregor_ewan/status/637666494487379968), which was an unexpected and wonderful surprise ♥
> 
> Dear carolinecrane - an 'appallingly sappy happily ever after' as requested. Really hope you enjoy!

* * *

**1986**

* * *

The bath water is starting to cool but Arthur's too lazy and comfortable to sit up and run some more hot in. He tries feebly to turn the tap with his foot but the air is chilly, unpleasant on his wet skin, and he gives up and sinks as much of himself as he can back underwater to make the most of the last few minutes of heat. He's got his eyes closed, head resting on the rim of the hideous old avocado tub, wrinkling fingers closed around an almost empty beer bottle; when he drinks the last swallow it feels warmer than the water.

The door opens, the creak of the rusty bottom hinge they haven't got around to replacing yet, and Arthur murmurs, "Five more minutes." He hears Curt's footsteps on the tiles then, bypassing the toilet – thank fuck; Curt's dismissal of personal boundaries is still taking a bit of getting used to even after two years. From experience, Arthur expects either idle fingers stroking his hair or a handful of water splashed in his face now, depending on Curt's mood.

But Curt says, "Wash this," as he dumps something on Arthur's wet chest. "There's shit on it."

"What the bloody hell—"

The beer bottle drops from his fingers, tips onto its side, and slowly sinks into the bathwater as it fills.

The baby on his chest wriggles, yawns with his tiny toothless mouth, and grabs Arthur's thumb.

"Curt?" Arthur calls, even though he's vanished back down the hall. "Several questions."

He wasn't kidding about the shit, smears of it streaked all up and down the baby's legs. Arthur mutters a stream of blasphemy as he's scooping water up, trying at first to clean it off without getting it all over himself and eventually just giving up and resigning himself to another bath, probably boiling hot and with wire wool instead of a flannel. At least one of them's comfortable; the baby seems to be falling asleep on him, tiny face crumpling and smoothing as he settles.

When Curt finally comes back – maybe thirty seconds later, though it feels like three hours – he's holding a towel, and he lingers there in the doorway folding it in half, shaking it out, folding it into thirds, opening it again, folding it lengthwise. "Big towel, tiny kid," he mumbles, glaring critically at the fabric as though it's to blame for everything. "What do I do, just roll him up like a joint?"

"How am I supposed to know? Jesus, just take it off me."

"Did you get all the shit?"

"I'm caked in it, thanks very much."

"Okay." He settles on his first choice, the towel folded in half, and between them they manage to get the baby wrapped up so there's nothing showing but his little face. He wakes once, frowning and perturbed at all the movement, then his bright little eyes slide closed again and he lies there still and silent in Curt's arms, swaddled in terrycloth, stark and white against the black leather of Curt's jacket.

"Curt."

"You've got"—Curt gestures with his free hand—"right on your tit."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Arthur mutters, swiping at himself with the flannel. "Do you mind telling me why you just dropped a shit-covered baby in my bath?"

"Well, the bath's the first place I wanna go when I shit myself, so..."

The most fucking infuriating thing about Curt is how nothing he does is actually infuriating, even when it should be. He just smiles like that – blue eyes twinkling, dimples notched deep into his stubbled cheeks, hair all falling messily out of its elastic band – and Arthur finds it impossible to be cross. Weary, certainly, and frequently unimpressed, but never cross.

"Is it yours?"

"Gimme a break. Out of the three of us I'm the only one who's never touched a vagina."

"Weren't you born?"

It sounded like a better line in his head than it actually does when it comes out of his mouth, flat and weak. Curt smiles anyway, the secret little curl of the lips that Arthur loves to kiss, at least when he's not covered in someone else's shit and trying his hardest to be angry.

"I'm Macduff, man. From his mother's womb untimely ripped. Come out, get out of the tub. We should talk."

He's boiling the kettle when Arthur finds him in the kitchen five minutes later, still with the baby tucked into the crook of his arm. There's something strangely _normal_ about it; he seems to carry the baby as comfortably as he holds a guitar, which is weird because as far as Arthur knows he's never been within twenty feet of one before.

"Talk, then," Arthur says, nudging a chair out with his foot as he's pulling one of Curt's old Polly Small t-shirts over his head and sitting down at the table.

"You wanna hold the kid while I make your tea?"

"Absolutely bloody not." He watches Curt multitask instead; a natural, like a dancer, cradling the sleeping baby as he's doing his thing with kettle and mug and spoon and teabag as if this is normal, as if he spends every day carrying a tiny person around the house. "Is he yours?"

"Guess he is now," Curt says vaguely as he sets the mug down in front of Arthur and takes the seat opposite. He's not smiling any more, he's watching Arthur carefully with his head cocked to the side like a curious bird. "Look, man, I know I should've, I don't know, asked you or warned you or whatever but they were gonna put him into care. You remember that girl Shelley from the Batcave? She can't look after him, she can barely look after herself. She was gonna take him to the police station and leave him on the steps, I couldn't fuckin' bear it."

They've been talking for months about getting a dog. Laughing at how fucking weird and domestic it is to be having these kind of conversations. Trust Curt to jump right to the finish line without bothering with all the hurdles first.

"I just figured," Curt goes on, softly, slowly, "your childhood was a fuckin' shitshow. Mine was a fuckin' shitshow with a side order of torture. I guess we don't know what to do with a kid, but we know what _not_ to do, right?"

With a very huge and overwhelming sense of _I'm going to regret this_ , Arthur hears himself say, "Give him here, then," and Curt's grin returns, sudden and dazzling. "Get me a tea towel or something before he shits himself on your jacket."

How hard can it be, really? Feed him, wipe him down when he gets mucky, keep him warm in winter and shaded in summer. Teach him the alphabet and the guitar and how to tie his own shoes. Simple enough, right?

Step one disproves that theory right away, trying to origami a tea towel around the kid's arse in a way that seems like it might hold the flood in when he goes again, at least until one of them can run out and fetch proper supplies in a minute. Frustrated with his useless knot-tying skills, Arthur finds his jacket hooked around the back of a chair, takes the pin out of his lapel, and uses that to keep the makeshift nappy together. Success, sort of.

"That belonged to Oscar Wilde," Curt reminds him, sounding faintly scandalised.

"Yeah," Arthur says as the baby, awake now and staring right at him, grabs at his thumb again and pulls it towards his toothless little mouth. "Well, now it belongs to this Oscar Wild instead."

* * *

**1988**

* * *

Sadie appears when Oscar is two: another irresistible bit of lost property Curt can't help bringing into the house. He's holding her tucked into his arm when Arthur comes home from work one day, trying to encourage her to suck on a bottle of milk. Oscar's sitting on Curt's knee in his pyjamas, chattering away quietly to the Fingermouse puppet he keeps bopping the baby gently on the head with.

"C'mon, man," Curt whispers, "you're not helping."

"I help," Oscar says, defiantly letting Fingermouse bop Curt on the nose instead. "Gimme, I help."

"Fucksake, okay." The back door was open to ease the sticky August heat so there was no rattle of keys to disturb them and they've not noticed Arthur yet; he stands there in the doorway, arms folded, just watching as Curt grabs Fingermouse with his teeth because his hands are full, spits it with weirdly impressive precision onto the coffee table, and wraps both of Oscar's little hands around the bottle. "Steady, kiddo. Hold it still for her."

"We're gonna need a bigger house if you keep this up," Arthur says softly, and Curt and Oscar both finally notice him – Oscar's face lighting up as he yells _daddy_ like it's been eight weeks since they've seen each other and not eight hours, and Curt's face going carefully guarded. The baby, disturbed by Oscar shouting and jolting the bottle, starts making little grumbling noises that sound as if they're going to turn into full on wails, and Curt shushes her, strokes his fingertip across the fine little spray of black hair on the top of her head, makes soft crooning sounds in his throat until she subsides and goes back to feeding silently.

Fifteen years ago Curt was literally setting stages on fire and making unappreciative audiences look at his dick. Now he's collecting abandoned children the way normal people collect stamps or tacky fridge magnets from seaside tat stalls.

"Oscar, say night night," Arthur tells him, and carries him upstairs upside-down by his ankles to make him giggle when it looks like he's about to throw a tantrum. Once he's settled and dozing off, Arthur heads back down to find Curt's finished feeding the mystery baby and she's asleep against his chest, MTV playing quietly in the background. Curt's eyes are tired but he smiles, crooked and lovely, and cocks his head at the empty armchair beside his own until Arthur comes and sits down.

"Her name's Sadie," he says, unprompted. "She came with it. Her name, a bag of diapers and milk and toys and shit. We can call her something else if you like."

"Are you not gonna ask me if I want another kid knocking about the place?"

Arthur reaches out across the space between them, smoothing Curt's mussed hair back behind his ear. There's something gritty and damp there; probably baby sick, wonderful. He's just about got used to not having that grimed under his fingernails every moment of the day.

"Do I need to?" Curt asks quietly, eyebrows raised. He knows the answer already.

"Give us a hold, then," Arthur says – and when she's settled in his arms, tiny wriggling little thing wrapped in one of Oscar's old blankets, Curt drops a kiss on the top of his head and goes to start unpacking her things.

* * *

**2006**

* * *

The bumps from the attic were alarming at first – a weird sort of sense-memory of the last half of the eighties, when every object was potential death and every crashing noise sent Arthur's heart rocketing up into his throat in a way he never, ever expected – but he can hear Sadie laughing now, Oscar's raised voice althrough not his words, and Arthur goes back to his cup of tea and the recording studio accounts paperwork spread like a map across the whole kitchen table.

"The fuck are they doing up there?" Curt asks, peering suspiciously up at the ceiling as though he thinks he might be able to see through, like magical dad-vision seeking out trouble through any kind of barrier.

"Looking for another suitcase."

"She knows her dorm room's gonna be about the size of a matchbox, right?"

"I gave up, she's not listened to my advice since she was twelve anyway."

Curt grins at that, eyes wrinkling at the corners – far fewer lines than he deserves – and goes back to picking out notes on his guitar. "You're the asshole with the rules. She listens to me."

"She—"

" _What the fuck_ ," Sadie yells from upstairs.

There's the sound of a brief scuffle, feet clattering on the floorboards, then Oscar shouts, "Fucking hell, why'd you have to show me that?"

"DAD."

"DAD."

"You go," Arthur insists, "I'm neck deep in accounting hell," but as Curt passes behind he reaches out and closes his fingers tight around Arthur's wrist, insistently yanking him to his feet and down the hall to the stairs.

"You find the homemade porno stash?" Curt asks as he sticks his head through the attic hatch, then drops back down, laughing, when someone throws a platform shoe at his head and makes vomit noises. Arthur manages to catch the shoe as it's sailing through the air, battered black leather with a four inch heel. Can't remember if it's his or Curt's.

"How come Tommy Stone's licking your guitar in the Melody Maker?" Oscar demands. "My brain's never gonna feel clean again."

"Tommy Stone was _cute_ ," Sadie says, a disembodied voice full of a strange confused sort of wonder drifting down the ladder.

"You ready for this?" Curt murmurs, laughter glimmering in his eyes. Arthur remembers those eyes from countless gigs and television programmes back when they were round about the kids' ages, hazy and unfocused with drugs and exhaustion, ringed with thick black circles of makeup that smudged when he sweated. Remembers that bizarre night on the roof, Curt's bare arm sliding around the front of his throat, _I wanna feel it, I wanna fuckin' feel it_ , and then years when it felt like the world was getting greyer and greyer until suddenly, in the least likely little dive bar in the world, he finally found the light switch again.

"I'm having this t-shirt," Oscar says over sounds of rummaging.

"You can't wear your dad's face on your t-shirt, that's just fucking weird – _oh my days_ , who dyed your hair that colour blue? Dad! You're so embarrassing, I swear to god—"

"Oh gimme that scarf, I want it, that leopard print one."

"What's the record? That – no, that one, yeah, give it here."

"Flaming Creatures, Bitter Sweet. Bet that's worth a fortune, it's fucking signed."

"I'm selling this."

Arthur pinches Curt's arse hard to get him moving back up the ladder and follows him into the attic to travel back in time.


End file.
